Safe and Sound (The Safe House Series Book 3)

by Leslie North

  A hand clamped down on her bicep—hard—arresting her mid-flight. Lola rounded on her captor with a cry of dismay. Max Sterling, yet again, had her in his hold. She struggled to bring her handbag down on his head. Her strike hit his shoulder before he grabbed her other arm. The pressure of his thumb on the tendon in her wrist caused her to drop her bag immediately.

  "Let me go." She didn't make it a plea this time, but an order. Her voice quavered, but she narrowed her eyes resolutely and attempted to stare the man down. Maybe it was a tone of voice that would have worked on her students, or on someone like Adrien Baudin, but it didn't appear to have any effect on Max.

  "As soon as I’m able, Lola," he said, his words peppered with exhales. "I give you my word. But right now I need you to listen to me."

  Lola didn't listen. She pulled away from him, but his grip never relented, and she succeeded only at hurting herself more. As if he realized this, Max yanked her against his chest and banded his arms around her, redistributing his strength and making it harder for her to find a single point of contact to try and exploit. To anyone watching, they would appear as lovers locked in an embrace. At the thought, Lola’s already-racing pulse threatened to jackhammer out of her chest. If they did have an audience, it was more than likely that anyone she approached now would give a second thought to helping her if they thought that she was only acting out as a result of a lover’s spat.

  She pulled her head away from his chest and arched her back, but freeing her arms proved impossible. Lola was as firmly bound against his length as she had been to the chair in his kitchen.

  As she continued to resist, Max's expression shifted. His demanding stare peeled away all pretense and gave a naked and unabashed assessment of her cleavage, her eyes, her lips. He looked at her as if he wanted to kiss her, not kill her, and her struggle brought what might have been an incidental brush of genitals to a full-on grind.

  Tears sprouted in Lola’s eyes. Not because she loathed the raid of his firm body against her much softer one, but because she liked it. What was wrong with her? Life or death. Captive or free. None of it seemed to matter much anymore where her heart was concerned.

  "For all that you seem like a genuinely decent man, Mr. Sterling, I can't reconcile that with what you've done. You've abducted me against my will and laid your hands on me more times than I have expressly given you permission."

  "Does that mean if I ask permission, you'll comply?" Max's hot breath gusted across her face, close enough to kiss.

  Lola blinked several times in rapid succession, completely flustered. No, that was most assuredly not what she had meant, and she had a feeling the man holding her knew that. Was this his idea of a joke? If it was, it was ill-conceived. She wanted to stand by her determination not to give in, but his eyes were kind and unwavering and elicited something real and honest inside her. No more running. No more games.

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know, sweetheart.”

  The endearment nearly shattered her. So secretive, so tender and emphatic. If he was putting on his own act, he had just nailed an Emmy.

  Her window of escape closed—for the moment. If she acted as if she thought it had closed permanently, maybe she stood a chance of Max letting his guard down around her once more in the future.

  She allowed him to lead her back to the car. The chase had ended, but her heart hadn’t received the memo. It couldn't be Max's hand on her bicep, she reasoned. He held it secure, skintight, because she had proven herself untrustworthy. Her wild pulse had nothing to do with the back of his hand skimming the side of her breast with every step.

  “If you two are finished with the foreplay, let us drive, Oui?” Baudin waited for them by the car, looking tired but amused by her attempted escape.

  “Shut up, Baudin.” This time, Lola fired the order.

  Baudin chuckled.

  Lola wrenched her arm free, knowing she only succeeded in the attempt now because she was close enough to the car for Max to relent. She climbed in the front and scrambled to the backseat. Max was already in the process of unlocking the back door and pulling it open for her, but she ignored him. Like heck she was going to let him falsely present himself as a gentleman. The last time she checked the rules of engagement between sexes, endearing yourself effectively didn't involve chasing an unwilling partner down in a parking lot.

  "You brute." Baudin acknowledged Max with a raised eyebrow. Some kind of testosterone code she didn’t understand.

  Lola sank back into her seat and refused to meet anyone's eyes, even when Max reached in to offer back her purse. She had taken it with her out of habit, but it was completely useless without her two most essential self-defense items: her cell phone, and her gun.

  Not that Lola could use her .357 on either man. In fact, they were beginning to grow on her, which was, quite possibly, the biggest threat of all to her freedom.

  #

  The next time Lola awakened, she roused from real sleep. Body shuddering-yawning, cat-like-stretching, crawl-into-consciousness kind of sleep. She sat up. Every muscle and bone in her body screamed in silent agony.

  Lola groaned and slumped forward in the backseat. When she opened her eyes, she saw a palm extended beneath her that held two aspirin.

  "Thanks, but I've got some in my bag," she muttered, squinting her eyes against the bright daylight, against unknown narcotics. The pills certainly looked like the harmless, candy-coated pain killers, but she couldn't be sure. The hand withdrew.

  Max refocused his attention on the road.

  "Where are we?" she asked.

  "Nice try," came Max's automatic response.

  They drove down a winding road that wasn't the highway. The landscape around them looked exceptionally well-manicured, too manicured to have happened by accident or as the result of a weekend gardening hobby. Lola craned her stiff neck around to look at the rolling emerald lawns unfurling behind them.

  "We're at Blue Moon Resort," she said with certainty.

  Baudin gave a short laugh from the front seat. “This one, she is sharp.”

  Sexy. Sharp. At this rate, she might consider becoming a card-carrying member of the Adrien Baudin fan club.

  "My neighbor always talked about coming here." Lola popped a handful of pain killers into her mouth and dry swallowed. There weren't enough left to down them all and force Max to take her to a hospital, something she had already contemplated and dismissed. Her primary goal now was to stay alert and healthy, so that when opportunity presented itself—and it would—she could make another break for it, unencumbered. And, while she thought she could estimate how Max Sterling would react if she put herself in a real health crisis, she couldn't be one hundred percent sure that he would take her to a hospital if it got in the way of his duty. Better to play it safe and wait it out.

  They pulled up in front of a two-tiered, opulent welcome center. In the distance, Lola spotted the rest of the resort. The layout looked familiar to her from Eugenia's cuttings and collected postcards. Her neighbor’s ecstasy about Blue Moon Resort had rubbed off a bit on Lola. Staying at a place like this had always seemed like a pipe dream to a young woman surviving on an elementary school teacher's salary. Now that she was here, she couldn't be sure she wasn't dreaming. This time when Max pulled open the door for her, she accepted the gesture without thinking and got out of the car. Her eyes traveled up the broadside of the building, and she managed to stifle a gasp of awe before it gave her away completely.

  Instead, she turned to Max and hugged her bag against her chest. "Isn't this a little ritzy? I mean, aren't you worried about us being spotted?"

  "Place is full of rich people." Max moved around the side of the car and pulled the trunk open, tossing Baudin one of two black duffle bags. He pulled the other one up over his shoulder and looked at Lola pointedly. "Perfect place to lay low for two days until the trial. Security is tight."

  "Aiden Baudin aim serré."

  At Lola’s quizzical look, Baudin translated.
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  “Yours truly likes it tight.”

  “Ew.”

  To his credit, Baudin clammed up instantly and managed to look a little sheepish. Just like one of her students. Men were still overgrown boys, after all—even if they were hitmen.

  "Shut up," Max advised his charge. "And quit looking at her like that. The two of you are not rooming together."

  "Do I get my own room then?" Lola asked hopefully. She really shouldn't have let her voice betray her optimism, because now Max also fixed her with a look of thinly-veiled impatience.

  "The reservation is a two-bedroom suite. You’re rooming with me.”

  Lola gawked at this, but found herself at a loss for words. She couldn't share a room with Max Sterling—no way. Her instincts should have rioted, her temper should have ignited, her brain should have concocted a counter-argument to her last best chance of escape, gone. Instead, her instincts plunged south, her temper flat-lined, and her brain fashioned a dozen different domestic images of her with Max, none involving clothes.

  She had officially lost it.

  Chapter 7

  "You're doing the right thing, Max.”

  Jason Rockwell, head of Rockwell Securities, had been a comforting presence in Max’s life since his family fell apart on his second tour in Afghanistan. Within a six-month span, his parents and sister had died, all battling demons too great for this lifetime. Rockwell had found a healthy way to channel Max’s anger and superior combat skills. Security became his savior.

  "Yeah? I'm not so sure."

  Max sat on the edge of the hotel bed, phone pressed to his ear, eyes trained on the cracked door to the shower.

  He disliked having to monitor Lola’s every move as much as she did, but it had to be done. It helped matters that he found the woman beautiful to the point of distraction. In fact, Max suspected his eyes would have been on her at all times with or without his suspicion riding shotgun to his every decision. Still, it would have been nice to give her the illusion of privacy.

  But he knew he couldn't afford to slip up again, not after her near-escape at the gas station. Granted, she hadn't gotten far. He surmised by her crestfallen expression when he caught her that she legitimately believed she had a shot of outrunning him, but that window of opportunity should have never been left open. Max kept it out of his conversation with Rockwell but planned to note it dutifully on his paperwork.

  Now that no one’s eyes were on him, Max allowed a relaxed posture. He slumped forward and brought his free hand up to massage the angular planes of his face, dragging his fingers down until he had tugged his mouth into a frown. It had been almost twenty-four hours since Lola had crashed into his life, and he had been awake longer than that. Sleep deprivation took hold with a vengeance.

  "You don't have to be sure about anything, Sterling," Rockwell said, not-so-effectively dismissing Max’s concern. "That's what I'm here for. Stick to protocol. Follow orders. You got Baudin and the woman—Lola Reyes, was it?—out of there. I'll run a full report on her now, just to be sure."

  "You won’t find anything. Her story will check out. Then the company will be under fire for my actions."

  "You did what you had to," said Rockwell. "And if she's anywhere near as decent as you seem to think she is, she'll see things our way. A man's life is on the line."

  "So is hers," Max said. "She never asked to be part of this. I brought her into the danger."

  "She drove herself off the road straight into danger." Rockwell's voice came across the line as a snarl. Max imagined the man's mind raced with thoughts of company damage control. "She's lucky you were there. You're a capable man, Sterling, otherwise I wouldn't have put you on this assignment. Under your watch, she's at worst inconvenienced. If she can't be appealed to logically or emotionally, then let her hire the best attorney her school teacher's salary can afford. And if that's her ultimate decision, I'd wish her luck on that front. She’ll need it."

  Max emitted a low hiss of frustration. The shower tap twisted off.

  "I'll check in tomorrow," he replied. "Forward me what you find. And look into her brother Jack while you're at it."

  "Easy there with the orders, Captain. Remember who runs the show."

  Rockwell signed off without any real words of parting. Typical. Max exhaled as he flipped his burner phone closed, but he didn't have the energy to feel truly angry. Besides, there was no one to direct his anger toward except himself. He supposed there was always Adrien Baudin, but he had already locked the hitman up for the night with orders to stay put. Picking a fight would not only be out of character for him, it would needlessly exhaust them both.

  He had just replaced his phone beside his gun in the bedside drawer when the squeaky bathroom door snagged his attention.

  Lola emerged in the hotel-issue robe, her curvaceous body filling the pristine white terry cloth in all the right places. The belt cinched around her waist seemed to have forgotten its purpose. Every small shift of her body exponentially increased the likelihood of a peep show. The bottom hem barely seemed to cover the junction between her thighs, and the more Max's eyes scrambled for a diversion the more he saw: shapely legs, profound cleavage.

  'Buxom' was too conventional a word for her. She was a revelation.

  The image was a stealth attack straight to his cock.

  She paused in dramatic fashion in the doorway, her eyes leveled on him.

  Lola stroked her fingertips through her dripping hair, blinked dewy lashes, and pursed her voluptuous lips.

  "Have room for one more?" She all but purred the question.

  The allure of a naked Lola warred with the notion that she might have used her shower minutes to craft a toothbrush shank she now hid in her robe pocket.

  In one slow stride toward him, the oxygen left the room. Max braced himself for an epic battle between his moral code and his rampant desire to divest her of the robe and taste every mouthwatering peak and valley on her body. Three steps into her panther-like prowl toward him, the belt of her robe snagged the door jam and yanked her backward.

  Lola half unraveled before executing a crisp, ninety-degree military turn that would have put the Marine’s Silent Drill Platoon to shame. Her once beguiling, if slightly unnatural, expression opened in horror, and her hands corralled the robe’s opening as if it were a chastity belt.

  It was then Max knew exactly what she was trying to do.

  Had the idea to seduce him occurred to her in the shower? The thought shouldn't amuse him as much as it did, but there wasn't a precedence for this sort of behavior from the school teacher to make it seem anything but completely inauthentic. Max crossed his forearms over his chest and acted as spectator to her struggle, amusement twitching the corners of his mouth.

  "I thought you didn't want to be roommates?"

  Lola wrenched herself free from the door, but the move left her unbalanced. She tottered backward toward the bed. Max half-rose to catch her, but her momentum was enough to send them both toppling to the bed. Lola landed on his lap, her bare belly sprawled across his obvious erection.

  Her robe lay in a puddle on the floor.

  His eyes scaled from the ample roundness filling her scalloped-lace edged black panties, up her flawless apricot-colored skin to the clasp of her matching black-shell bra. The warmth of her breasts through the two layers of fabric separating them—one hers, one his—was an inferno to gunpowder. He didn’t know if he should extract her or fuck her.

  In the end, honor won.

  He helped her to turn, to rise to a seated position, half at his knees, half on the bed beside him. Her brows contorted, a mixture of confusion and humiliation, all of it pure innocence. A stab of regret pierced his chest that he could never tell her how much he wanted to nuzzle into her softness and lose himself. He was about to feed her a professional line—something like I’m flattered, but my job has boundaries—when Lola sabotaged herself again by puckering her face like a cartoon Betty and running her finger along his jawline, ear to chin.
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br />   "What do you say?" She injected her voice with an odd, amorous tenor that sounded like she had just chain-smoked Baudin’s entire pack.

  Max raised his eyebrows, a silent invitation for her to continue.

  "What do you say we…" Lola faltered, before soldiering on heroically. "What do you say you and I make the most of an awkward situation, Mr. Sterling?"

  "And what awkward situation would that be, Lola?"

  His deliberately obtuse question, when married to her first name, further proved his tactical advantage. Her cheeks sprouted roses, and her pupils swelled wider.

  "Well…" Her breathlessness didn't feel so put-on this time. "I mean. The two of us have to share a bed tonight. We may as well make it official, right?"

  "Official?" Max didn't want to admit it, but he enjoyed the game. He laced his hands behind the woman's back and pulled her closer. A warm, lavender scent lifted from her skin—no doubt the flower-shaped soap that adorned the butler’s towels he spotted on his preliminary sweep of the room. Almost every time she had been in his arms since her car accident, he had restrained her. Their current proximity was a welcome change…even if it was inappropriate. He shouldn't egg the woman on in her act, but he couldn't help it. Her eyes held the same determined look she had when he caught her in a full run, and he wanted—no, needed—to see how far she would press for her freedom.

  Also, her nearly-bare body in his arms gave him a tantalizing eye-level view of her pale, plump breasts and beaded nipples straining against the structured but gauzy black fabric. A thousand tactics to reverse advantage raced through his mind, but his blood supply was on permanent override to his groin and every last damned strategy ended with Lola Reyes on her back.

  "Official? As in…?" Lola struggled once more to find words.

  Max drew her closer. A few more inches and a dry hump was a viable, if maddening, possibility.